Just a reminder, the Morning Briefing is going to take off Thanksgiving Day and the day after to recover from the rampant gluttony, screaming kids, football, and did I mention the deliciously delightful gluttony of Thanksgiving with my in-laws. They know how to use bacon drippings! Yum.

The Wall Street Journal reports Joe Lieberman is digging in his heels. He will filibuster any health care legislation that contains a public option, even if the legislation allows states to opt-out.Lieberman has been a thorn in the side of the left ever since they decided to challenge him back in 2006. In that year, the left beat Lieberman in the Connecticut Democrat Primary. Lieberman decided to stay in as an independent in the general election and won. With a number of his long time Senate friends endorsing the Democrat in 2006 because the man had a “D” next to his name, Lieberman has been his own man ever since.Lieberman retains his Senate committee chairmanship and the privileges of being a Democrat member of the Senate. That may change soon as Harry Reid is staking his reputation on passage of the health care legislation.Please click here for the rest of the post.

It does not feel like it, but we are winning the war against ObamaCare.You may feel like the political system is broken and the Democrats are not listening to the voters. You feel that way because it is true, the Democrats are not listening. But that does not mean the bill will not die — because it turns out that the two Independent Senators are listening.Clearly, the Democratic Senate leadership and the White House put so much pressure on the so-called moderate Senators to win this one vote to proceed to the bill, they created a political mirage that the bill’s chances are strong. But they are not. The bill is very brittle, and when it implodes, it will shatter.As the bill stands right now, the Democrats cannot pass it. They cannot get to 60 votes on the vote to end the filibuster of the bill.If they try to take the public option out, Senator Sanders and others (Burris, Brown and Franken) are threatening to vote against ending the filibuster. If they keep the public option in, then Senator Lieberman has threatened to vote against ending the filibuster. Either way — public option in or out — the bill dies. And Senator Sanders is not going to agree to any co-oped-trigger-opt-out compromise on the public option.Please click here for the rest of the post.

Nine days after there was an announcement that their group was going to be investigated? Yup, that’s right: ACORN. San Diego office – just before California AG Jerry Brown came to visit. Alas, if only somebody had had the foresight to wait for this sort of thing to happen, and retrieve the documents…Nine days after there was an announcement that their group was going to be investigated? Yup, that’s right: ACORN. San Diego office – just before California AG Jerry Brown came to visit. Alas, if only somebody had had the foresight to wait for this sort of thing to happen, and retrieve the documents…Please click here for the rest of the post.

Scientific knowledge, like genuine religious faith, is one of the few marked differences between civilized man and the apes that first climbed down from the trees and walked upright. It sets us apart, helps define our existence and drives us ever forward towards better life and a more decent society.At least it does these things until it is censored. When the progression of learning is thwarted by fear, greed or mendaciousness, the societal base of knowledge can only crumble and rot. As the genius is lost, the innovation goes away. One less trait differentiates our society from the hidebound oligarchy imagined in the Planet of The Apes movies.In these purloined emails [from global warming scientists], we see the cynical corruption and meretricious evil that these jackals have perpetrated at The Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University. A key motor that drives our progress and growth as human beings has been stilled to satisfy the transitory greed of a political elite. Rome eventually fell because of similar self-delusion. If our society is to survive, scientific inquiry must be retaken from the iniquitous emailers, revealed as malefactors by the Great Email hack of 2009.Please click here for the rest of the post.

To begin, the only reason I’m alive to write this diary is because I benefitted from high-tech medical innovation. In my case, it was computer-controlled 3D conformal, external x-ray therapy for recurrent prostate cancer. (BTW I’m happy to report nominal PSA values at five years and counting.)So continued medical innovation and I have an intense personal relationship. For that reason, one key reason that both the House and Senate versions of health care “reform” deeply disappoint me is that they will badly damage medical innovation by removing most of the profit motive to fund risky research.There are two basic reasons for this, both driven by political budgeting: price controls and limitation of market access. Market access will be collateral damage from “relative cost-effectiveness” judgments rendered by committees of political apparatchiks empowered by both House and Senate bills.If you think that choking off medical innovation will only mean that currently untreated medical conditions will remain untreated, you aren’t seeing the whole picture. (As if ignoring the long list of currently-unsatisfactorily-treated medical conditions weren’t bad enough.)Please click here for the rest of the post.

Charlie Crist just hurts himself more and more every time he opens his mouth. In January, when he decides to quit the Senate primary (you heard it hear first) and get back in the Florida Governor’s race, he’s going to be doing some scrambling to douse the flames on all the bridges he is burning.In the latest rant against Marco Rubio Crist attacks Rubio for voting for tax increases in Florida, which were actually unanimously endorsed and Jeb Bush sponsored refusals to roll back property taxes for education initiatives. Crist is also attacking Rubio for wanting to get rid of property taxes by raising sales taxes, a measure that Crist had actually suggested in the first place.It that wasn’t bad enough, Crist called himself pro-life, ignoring that until recently he called himself pro-choice and called himself “anti-tax” despite proposing and signing into law several recent tax hikes on Florida citizens.But it gets even better.Please click here for the rest of the post.